Current personal computers include some sort of keyboard entry device, a central processing and disc drive unit and a monitor usually involving the use of a cathode ray tube (CRT). In the case of word processing, printed text or material is presented on the CRT screen, is edited and is then printed by a printer which in general is a horizontally-oriented device which takes up a considerable amount of space and which utilizes fan-folded or sprocket-fed continuous sheets of paper which require physical room for input and output stocks. There is also great paper waste for leading and trailing paper leaders. Moreover, it is only with great difficulty that these printers can be made to utilize low cost bond and copier paper, and cut sheet jam ups in such a machine require virtually disassembling the entire unit in order to clear the jam. The horizontal printing units resemble flat typewriters without a keyboard and are exceptionally heavy and unweildly such that they must be placed on an adjacent table, or the work station must be significantly enlarged in order to accommodate the printer. More often than not the printer is located away from the typing work station which makes viewing of the print out inconvenient for the operator in that the operator must move from the typing station to the printout station, especially if pre-cut sheets of paper are utilized.
By way of further background, one type of apparatus for feeding sheets of paper from a magazine into a printing office machine is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,248,415 in which detachable angled paper magazines are utilized with a separate already existing printer. This patent is thus directed to a printer add-on and not to a stand-alone self-contained printer. In this patent the counter rotation of a printer platen squares paper when paper is fed from a magazine into a platen by virtue of a picker roller. It will be appreciated that in this patent vertical hoppers are not used and that there is no specification of how the paper is withdrawn from the collection bin. Moreover, the utilization of paper magazines introduces a level of complexity and additional parts which in general result in a more expensive machine. Thirdly should there be a machine jam-up or in time "wearout", there is no alternative paper for path feeding paper into the printing mechanism should the picker mechanism malfunction. Thus there is no so called "limp mode" operation. Also, the platen and picker rollers are belt driven which suffers from belt stretch and breakage. Finally, the provision of electronics between hoppers is neither shown nor taught in this patent and bottom weighting of the device to provide a small-footprint, free-standing, self-contained printer is not discussed. Other feeding devices for printers, but none constituting a stand-alone printer, include U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,366,206; 3,776,545 and 4,089,402. It will be noted that each of these devices is made for attachment to an already existing device and mainly relate to sheet feeding as opposed to a stand-alone printer configuration.